--Vocal recording 66408--Cell 84--
21:45pm
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"Now that I know I'm pregnant, I'd swear I can feel the baby... kicking. Moving around. Which is probably impossible, because it's only been...
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"...what, nine weeks..."
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"...at the most. But... Is that normal...? I don't know. I don't know what to do..."
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"I've been thinking a lot about names, too. If it's a girl, I think I'll call her... Maira."
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[prolonged outletting of breath] "That's a nice name. Why Maira? Oh, thank you for asking. Named after the poet, you see. All of her poems and stories were banned by the Manuductive, but I still like the name."
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"Alright, OK. I just wanted to be asked, so I..."
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"Anyway... I left off last time... just after Six had, had killed that girl. I remember she.... sort of... twitched, and then went... totally still..."
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"Six said to me - exact words, I have a good memory for that sort of thing - he said,
"That's all we could have done. She was beyond help. It's kinder this way... I know I'd rather die that way... quickly, painlessly... than any other way."
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"He was talking as if... he was remembering something. I don't know, I never found out, but..."
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"Anyway... After saying all that, I remember that... Six said,
"you ought to go back to that other room, you know. I don't know if they saw you; they might think you ran away in the night."
He didn't wait for me to answer. He started to... he started cleaning away the blood from the girl.... fresh blood and dried blood."
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"I did what he said, I went through to the next room. I remember seeing that some of the members of the D.E.M. had moved out of there, so it was quieter. Two had gone, as well."
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"After... after a few seconds, I looked around for Eight, and I saw... he was staring at me. A little. Just out of the corner of his eye. Actually, he saw me, he saw that... that I'd seen him looking, and... he turned away, quickly. He looked angry, all of a sudden."
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"I... walked over to where he was. I suppose I just wanted to talk with someone, and... Six had scared me a little. I know that he'd killed the girl... out of, out of mercy, but..."
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"Anyway, Eight was still staring down at the map he and two had been looking at earlier. I remember that it showed New 10 Downing Street, and the Bureaux surrounding it... there were little notes scribbled in pencil around the edges... all in... well, later I got to know it as the form of shorthand the D.E.M used. At the time, none of it made any sense to me."
[pause 12.5s]
"Eight... he sort of confirmed what Six had thought, because he said to me,
"I thought you'd have run away, you know. You wouldn't have gotten far, but I'd have expected you to have tried. You're still scared of us."
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"It was weird, that he knew that. He wasn't asking, he was just making a statement. Eight could do that. You thought he was asking a question, but really he was just... stating a fact. I remember that about him."
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"Eight... I... I.."
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"You know... there's three people I think could... could make me feel better about... the baby... if they were here right now."
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"Eight, obviously. But then...there's also... my mum. She could... she.."
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"The third one... is Six. I mean, as a doctor, he... he'd know... what's... what to..."
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"He's dead now. So, well..."
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"But... when i think of them dying, I always end up thinking about Eight. There's always hope, but... but... what if he's..."
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"Oh, what am I talking about? There's only me in here."
[pause 11s, voices]
"Can we leave it for a while?"
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***
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[pause 34s, voices]
"OK... I'll try."
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"Wait... wait, say something..."
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"What... hold on, what happened to the other two?"
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"Oh."
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"... Why? And where did they-"
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"OK, OK."
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"... So... err... I remember Eight saying that to me, saying that he expected me to run away, and... and I told him about... what I said a while ago, about thinking about how Tyburn had killed Zero without... without a thought. And... how Alecto had ordered him to do that."
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"Eight asked me what I meant by that. I... I said..."
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"The thing is... the thing is that... since I'd joined the D.E.M.... well, not joined, because that makes it sound like I did it voluntarily... since I'd been with them... mostly since what happened in the old factory, with Zero... I'd started to think that... maybe there was something more... to what the, the D.E.M were fighting for. That's why I hadn't run away. Already, I was starting to have doubts about..."
[pause 16.5s]
"Anyway. I said all this to Eight, and... he listened, and then he said,
"Right, so. Well, that's fair enough. You do know, though, how unlikely it is that you'll survive?"
I nodded, without really... thinking about it, and he... laughed."
[pause 19s]
"Then he said,
"Follow me. There's something I want you to see."
He didn't wait for me to, to reply or answer, he just turned and walked out of the room. I had to run to keep up."
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"I remember following him... up through the house, around the corridors, and... up to the highest point. Not the roof, but just... an attic room, with a huge window in one wall. You could see all the eastern part of the city, including that ruind factory, with the white chimneys, and.... and that was... In the whole of that house, that was the only place you could see the Bureaux buildings, with New 10 Downing Street... behind them."
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"Eight was pointing towards it. He said to me,
"Do you know what that building is?"
[pause 9s]
"It seemed like such an obvious question, I thought I'd misheard.. I looked around at him, and I said,
"What?"
He said,
"That building. Do you know what it is?"
[pause 25s]
"I said,
"Errr, it's New 10 Downing Street...?"
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"He didn't look at me. He said - he was totally serious, not even smiling-without-smiling... and he said... I'll always remember this, no matter what happened... in the end..."
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"Eight said,
"No, Three. That's not New Ten"
.... he always used that, the abbreviation of the name...
"That's not New Ten. What that is, is a great big fucking target."
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Hey guys!
Well it's been a while since I uploaded Three, it was fun to take a break and write something else, then come back to it.
Ok Mia, u didn't get it on ur birthday, but... did u notice? Hope u liked it.
Don't forget to commentify, guys!